


all is not lost

by aishiteita



Series: UNDER THE VERY VERY BLUE MOON [3]
Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, This Is STUPID
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 12:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10020806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aishiteita/pseuds/aishiteita
Summary: It's bone against metal, it's two boys against time, it's Kihyun against himself.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this doesnt make sense bUT ENJOY IT ANYWAYS LADS AND LADS im sorry.

It is with his strength of being barely seventeen, that Yoo Kihyun, second-year turning third, pushes Shin Hoseok, third-year turning freshman, into the rough asphalt of the school's entrance. Hoseok pulls Kihyun along for the fall, socked ankles grazing the iron of the school gates and Kihyun winces from the impact. It's bone against metal, it's two boys against time, it's Kihyun against himself.

Less of the whole personality deal and more of either a) he's born a year earlier, or b) he's smart enough to skip a grade and head straight to college. It's him against himself, but there's no battle to begin with because not much can be changed. Hoseok is on the ground, under him, their limbs a jumbled mess and time should just be irrelevant for a moment, a moment being exactly ninety seconds of laughing through the fresh bruises and scrapes before they get up, before they head to Hoseok's mother's café, before Hoseok gives him the usual loose hug and _see you, Hyun_. Before he rips off the calendar paper one day too late and realizes that he has exactly one week left before Hoseok's flannels, folded into neat squares, get packed into old boxes from coffee shipments.

"You sure you wanna aim for the same university?" Hoseok asked him once, in a voice that was a tad too much like his father's. "I'm not gonna give you the whole _do it for you_ spiel here—"

"So full of yourself," Kihyun interjected, "who said I'm applying there to follow _you_?"

Literature and psychology aren't special courses, and the professor he admires is in a different prefecture, but where Hoseok is is where Kihyun wants to be; he's learned over the past five years of befriending Hoseok how to not be overly clingy, he's learned to separate them both just enough that people won't poke fun at them, enough that Hoseok hopefully doesn't find him too bothersome. (But Hoseok clings to him, and the unwelcome curiosity from his peers was something Kihyun had grown to ignore, _that Hoseok dude is always with you—aren't you bothered?_ )

"Thanks for coming over and helping me sort my shit out," Hoseok says at the door, beaming, hoodie wrinkled and sweatpants dusty.

"Thanks for the free lunch," Kihyun tells him, "and dinner."

 _Never_ , Kihyun had told them, every time, because he liked it and still likes it when Hoseok clings to him, will continue to like it if it's possible, though the possibility of _cling_ becoming _clung_ seems larger at the moment, the moment being more than ninety seconds, the moment spanning at least ninety days, maybe weeks, months.

 

 

**well**

No one told him how hard it would be to not have anything to hold onto against the current that is time. Black text on his paper-white monitor makes the days go by but it's so slow, time moves so slowly and the current is almost still and he has to kick it, has to kick himself and make the ship sail to get to wherever Hoseok is. Black ink smudged across the pink of his palm, where the skin had been pressed against the table for too long; black hoodies but one of them isn't his, the sleeves too long when he pushes his arms through them and oh, it's Hoseok's. The pink of his cheeks the first time he realizes this, how it fades to nothing over the days, weeks, months of wearing and washing and wearing and washing the same hoodie, traces of Hoseok gone from it but the sleeves will always be too long.

"It's been a while," Hoseok greets him, looking slighter than last Kihyun saw, but his hair is the same dark brown, strands over his eyes. He grins wide enough to not grin for the next millennium, or at least, the next week.

Kihyun can never be that generous with his smiles. Something about Hoseok makes him give just a bit more, though. The tiniest bit. "Buy me coffee, hyung."

He doesn't understand every single word Hoseok's been saying, but it's fine. He has only half a year left at most. It's fine.

"Text me whenever you wanna meet!" Hoseok says, waving goodbye.

Kihyun never really does because time runs slow enough as it is, the current barely carrying his weight. There's no need to make longing pull him closer to the shore, anchor him with frozen frames of cafés and watered down coffee.

" _Please_ wash that hoodie," his mother pleads often.

"I'll do it later," he often tells her. Later being much later, when he's had it on for so long he feels like he could die in it and it'd be alright.

 

 

**lacrimal**

"You're _fucking_ kidding me."

"I'm sorry."

He's just an inch away from Hoseok, a mere inch from all the kicking and pushing and holding back he's done. He hasn't cried. Not a single teardrop out of him for the whole year. He's made it so far and now there's a bomb falling from the sky, straight down to his head and the little ship that tries to carry his weight, there's a bomb and at the same time, a volcano underneath him; the rumbling that courses through his legs from the soles of his feet, the heat, falling into the heat but it's wet and he can't breathe. The heat scorches and burns him from the inside out, but his hands grasp pressure only to lose it, the water unable to soothe, unable to douse.

"Your mom's café is a two-hour journey from the university!"

"That's why I'm dropping out. It's too far, Hyun. I have my priorities."

"Take the semester off, then. Don't drop out." The flames grow taller, higher, to the point where Kihyun can't see Hoseok anymore. "Please?"

Between the heat, the wet, the blues and reds, Kihyun sees Hoseok looking painfully confused but not quite apologetic. "I've submitted the form. Again, I'm sorry."

Eventually the flames will eat everything up and die on its own, leaving Kihyun bare and alone in the middle of nowhere, three days away from graduation but even if Hoseok were to show up, it won't be a repeat of last year with the scrapes and bruises, ankles against the metal gate and dirt on their blazers.

A year, and only now does he cry. Quiet and controlled sobs like he forgot how to cry in the process, but his ribs thrum against skin to escape the heat, and he does his best to not let the fire get to Hoseok's hoodie even though the ends of its sleeves are soaked in salt.

The voicemail reads: _Yoo Kihyun, you better give me a damn good reason for why the_ fuck _didn't you go to your own graduation._

Answer: because he has to do his best in the task of drenching the hoodie in salt, drench it in every fat teardrop his body can possibly secrete. Because tears don't burn.

 

 

**ghosting**

Cold wars last for a long time, is what he concludes. The current finally moves, flames gone and he's filled to the brim with salt yet his body is light, carried away by time like it doesn't exist, or he doesn't exist. He doesn't think he's sinking. (But even if he is, he wouldn't know.)

He reads photocopied pages from books he can't afford, papers given out by the professor, reads stories he never knew existed (because he reads them and feels like rotting away on the inside, feels like he wants to ask _would Hoseok ever read something like this_ , feels like his head should not be his). He reads texts from his parents telling him to come home some time, he reads his replies telling them that he will.

He read the texts saying _Hyun, what's wrong? We can talk it out. Why are you mad? I'm sorry. I'll visit you, where's your dorm? I can give you discounts or even free coffee._

Cold, he thinks, not packing the black hoodie along with his other clothes when he moved into his dorm room. Cold, how he deleted their old chats in a spur of blind anger. Cold, the regret of doing so, how he feels childishly upset almost every time his phone rings and he can't pick up. Cold, because he always expects Hoseok yet knows too well it won't be him. Hoseok's always been good at space, at distance.

The photos of Hoseok he has in his phone are too pale, too filtered for Kihyun to feel the flush on Hoseok's cheeks when he cracks a bad joke, when his sweater is too thick, when the water for the coffee isn't hot enough and his mother pinches his shoulder.

"Are you alone?" is what the glasses of 80-proof tell him, a haze he's grown to despise because before him is pale skin wrapped in a black hoodie, and pale fingers seek out his, pulls the cold glass away from him, pulls Kihyun closer to a warmth he's missed, warmth that doesn't scald.

But the fingers, the skin, the hoodie don't belong to Hoseok, and it's so cold in the room that Kihyun feels the nausea, haze clearing to make way for panic at how he's given a stupid article of clothing such high importance to the point where it's almost sentient.

"You're home," his mother cheers, hugging him tightly in the doorway. "It's been so long."

"I've missed you too, mom," Kihyun murmurs into her cardigan, but his legs itch to take him to his room, where the salt-soaked sleeves are.

They're surely dry now, flammable.

 

 

**flare**

Two hours away by train from the university becomes a mere ten-minute walk from his house, but the latter is worse.

The hoodie smells like his closet, like the mothballs he threw in a couple days before moving out. It doesn't smell like his grime, doesn't smell like Hoseok's cologne that he used to laugh at because it was way too expensive and had costed Hoseok nearly a month's worth of lunch money. Its dry sleeves weigh him down, fabric in abundance, the elastic hem hitting the tip of his fingers.

A stranger greets him when he enters the café, some employee who he wants to set alight with the ends of his frayed nerves. His throat is too dry to drink anything, hands too clammy, heart threatening to crawl its way up and out of his mouth. The countertop sears his skin, tongue sand when he gives the barista his order on autopilot.

The café smells the same, exactly like how it was before he left, like the day they fought which was ultimately the last time he saw Hoseok and nothing is comforting him, the steam wafting from his mug threatens his eyes, threatens him to shut his lids tight, begs to squeeze out his tears into the black of his coffee. He doesn't sit facing the counter for fear of looking straight at Hoseok should he ever come out. If he's ever coming out. Kihyun didn't bother calling or texting, didn't check for a schedule and honestly, he's going to waste the hours away until his coffee cools down to a bitter sludge, until midnight and Hoseok will unknowingly prove that Kihyun is indeed stupid because no, tonight isn't his shift anyway _and all your bravado was for naught because? Why didn't you come back when you could've? This is your fault._

A hand on his shoulder. Kihyun flinches. Hoseok looms over him with the café's apron around his waist, pale as ever, but there's pink in his cheeks and brown hair over his eyes. It's as if Kihyun never even left, as if this were last year when Kihyun would come over to the café every weekend. As if Hoseok's graduation never happened but it did because his ankles hurt, there are scrapes on his palm where the hoodie can't cover skin. The wood of his table is just as hard as metal in this moment, this moment being less than ninety seconds, but it feels like ninety years between them before Hoseok's eyes widen and he whispers, "Kihyun?"

Ninety years in ninety seconds, in a moment, and Kihyun feels the flames again, feels it flare up from within to burn everything up, from his fingertips to lick at the dry sleeves of Hoseok's hoodie, until he can't hide it anymore, until he's bare and naked and the hoodie is returned to its rightful owner after every trace of Yoo Kihyun is gone from it.

"Kihyun, you're back," Hoseok gasps, as if he's in awe, as if Kihyun's presence before him is some biblical occurrence and he's ready to archive it.

"I'm back," Kihyun whispers. Hoseok's presence before him is beyond that of a biblical occurrence, and he's blinded by it, awed to the point of paralysis; his fingertips are against the scalding coffee mug, but he can't move them. If he so much as moves a single toe muscle, allow his lips one tiny quiver—he's sure to die. He knows he would.

Hoseok doesn't. "I've missed you."

Bare, naked; the hoodie is already taken away from him, but the flames don't come. The ice stops in its tracks, receding back into the freezing cave of whisky in fake glasses and the cold of his dorm room with every breath Hoseok exhales, ghosting along Kihyun's cheek.

"I've missed you too," he manages to choke out past the lump in his throat. His arms reach up, winding themselves around Hoseok's waist, parallel to the band of his apron. Hoseok's back is foreign against Kihyun's fingertips, but he doesn't mind. He's sailed through oblivion to get here. He's crawled through coarse salt, through the flickering flames. He's waited in nothing for so long, too long. He buries his face in Hoseok's shirt, reeking of mold and Robusta. "I've missed you more."

"So unfair. So full of yourself." Kihyun feels Hoseok's voice more than he hears it, feels fingers in his hair, fingers tracing the shell of his ear, fingers resting on the nape of his neck. Heartbeats that aren't his remind him that it's over, it's done. The earth can wither and take him along for the ride and it's fine.

"I've really missed you."

It's all fine, now.

 

**Author's Note:**

> theres salt in piss right


End file.
